WD TV LIVE subtitle issues

Cool workaround and it works too. I hope your blog post is not implying I was whining on the forums, though :wink:

No not at all. This thread was a very good initiative and saved me a lot of time. I slightly rephrased that sentence to remove the ambiguity.

What I meant was that others complain enough so that WD can be aware of the issues. If I also start repeating what has already been said that won’t improve the situation. However with the workarounds I found I am happily streaming my mkv files with internal vobsub via dlna so this has improved the situation, at least for me.

You sure did improve the situation. I’ve forwarded your findings to WD and hopefully they’ll find a way to fix this by firmware update. Haven’t heard from pixelpower so I don’t know how things are looking on the **bleep** front. I just don’t watch anime.

mjuhasz wrote:

I sorted out the license issues and made the modified version of BDSup2Sub available on my blog.

Looks helpful, but how exactly do I run this? I downloaded it and have no idea what to do.

It’s a JAR file (a Java ARchive.)

As long as you have the Java Runtime installed on your PC, all you need to do is double-click the JAR file and the program will launch.

I finally got it to work, but it seems it doesn’t support A.S.S. subtitles which most of my video files have.

The workaround I added is for the binary subtitle format (sub/idx or sup). SSA is text-based therefore you don’t need the workaround my bdsup2sub version provides.

In order to edit text-based subtitles you’re better off with a tool like Jubler which is for text-based subtitles. bdsup2sub is for editing the binary streams from dvd or blu-ray disks and convert between those.

Oh I see. Well the biggest issue I have is with the dropouts. All the other problems I can ignore, but when two people are talking at the same time and one of the text streams gets cut off it’s kind of hard to ignore it. I hope someone eventaully can fix this, or find a workaround since if it does get fixed I think I’ll go back to watching MKVs on my WD media player again. I just got sick of it after a while and started watching all my MKVs on my PC. There are just way too many problems with the subtitles on the WD media players which is a real shame since most of the stuff I watch is subbed anime.

With dropouts I was referring to VobSubs (image based), A S S support seems to be rudimentary at best.

I bought a shiny new WD TV Live today and I have the exact same problem. It is bordering me sooooo much. It’s like my whole anime collection could be deleted. Is there any way that this will ever get fixed ? I don’t want to reencode my whole collection. I am very mad about this -.-

Work is being done on fixing the subs, not time frame available though.

I read about this over a year ago. Either it’s been worked on reeeally slow, or they don’t want to fix it.

It is kind of funny how GoodPlayer on my Ipad is capable of doing subs better.  My 2 year old Archos 5 can at least correctly display vob subs so I really dont understand why this is taking so long.

It’s not funny at all but only logical since it’s a completely different system. If VLC would run on the LIVE’s hardware, it would be piece of cake too. You might have noticed the swell of other bugs which could be the reason subs have lower priority. However, I do have a beta firmware that has these VobSubs issues fixed. Dunno about A S S though, I  don’t watch Anime.

I think it is funny not Ha Ha funny but curious funny because VobSubs is probably one of the oldest sub formats.

I got that. However, apparently adding support for different formats is tricky, especially as Sigma’s chip restrictions may apply.

Any pointer on how to get that beta FW?  Or, better yet, any idea of when WDC might release it for update?  This has been driving me nuts for months. 

What is the issue with VLC running on Live (or Live+) hw?  Wouldn’t that be a great solution to not only the subtitle issue?  And a lot of other issues.  Especially the ability to use menus on ripped DVDs. 

dhstraayer wrote:

What is the issue with VLC running on Live (or Live+) hw?  Wouldn’t that be a great solution to not only the subtitle issue?  And a lot of other issues.  Especially the ability to use menus on ripped DVDs. 

 

VLC- never going to happen. The cpu in the Live (+ or hub) does not have the processing power to run VLC. It is only a 500MHz cpu. Plus there are no open source drivers for the video rendering hardware in the device. It has been tried but failed.

DVD Menus- you have this today if you are using up-to-date firmware.

Could you expand on your comment that we have DVD menus now, with up-to-date firmware? 

Is that using network shares, or streaming? 

By the way, I downloaded and tried the bdsup2sub hack that Miklos Juhasz published.  Worked like a charm!  I’d ripped Season 2, disk 1 of “Modern Family”, and the subtitle fill was transparent, making the subtitles almost unreadable.  I applied the bdsup2sub to the idx/sub files, remade the mkv files, and they worked like a charm!  Now it looks like I have also gained a solution to the “no subtitles on blu-ray” problem too.  I had been searching the web for .srt ASCII subtitles, but that’s a lot of work, because sometimes you have to fiddle with the timings.  

What is the problem with those WDC firmware folk?  They’ve got their bug delivered to them on a plate.  Should be a piece of cake to fix.

Ah well, a million for new features, nary a cent for bug fix.  Story of firmware.

DHStraayer